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Virginia Tech

Investigating Student Perceptions of Equitable Grading Practices

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Grading is one of the key components of modern pedagogy. Grades are primarily meant to be a method of communication, which is initiated by the owners of the pedagogy (instructors, school, etc.) and are received by various parties such as students: as feedback on their learning outcomes, parents, potential employers, other institutions, etc. However, traditional grading practices in wide use across institutions globally suffer from many problems and can prove to be a hindrance to students achieving their learning outcomes. Many of these practices do not have a backing in education and social research and suffer from various problems such as inherent bias, rewarding of behavior over skill or knowledge, increasing student anxiety, etc. In contrast, EGPs have been backed in research, follow a more open assessment method and have been shown to induce increased learning. Thus, to mitigate some of these problems, we employ Equitable Grading Practices (EGPs) in an introductory CS-1 course at Virginia Tech for the Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 semesters. In this thesis, we introduce these practices and evaluate student perceptions of them thereafter to answer research questions so that we may be able to refine these practices. We gather student experiences primarily through two instruments: a survey and one-on-one interviews. We describe these in detail and evaluate them through the use of statistics as well grounded theory analysis to be able to extract student perceptions of these grading practices.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Computer Science & Applications
Department dc:contributor.department
Computer Science and#38; Applications
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2024

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Shukla, Anmol
Chairs dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Edwards, Stephen H.
  • McCrickard, Donald Scott
Committee member dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Ellis, Margaret O.'Neil

Subjects

dc:subject × 5

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright
Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:40709
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/119512

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Shukla, Anmol. Investigating Student Perceptions of Equitable Grading Practices. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2024. https://hdl.handle.net/10919/119512